The Art of Agile Development [Paperback]

The Art of Agile Development is one of my best purchases in a long time. I've read a lot of Extreme Programming and Agile Software Development books and this one really nails it. Many are too theoretical, vague, or just plain developer-centric. This book however is of real practical value to everyone in the team: customers/business analysts, testers, and developers alike.

The book builds around 37 agile development practices in five categories: Thinking, Collaborating, Releasing, Planning, and Developing. Respective examples of practices are: Energized Work, Ubiquitous Language, No Bugs, Vision, and Incremental Design & Architecture. It's obvious that the authors are experienced practitioners as the text is littered with symptoms of common problems and remedial advice. Each practice has a clear explanation, answers to common questions, results you should expect to see, and when to and when not to adopt the practice given your current environment.

As a developer I'm finding this book invaluable. It's helped me think and communicate far more succinctly and effectively - even for material I was intimately familiar with. It's also a book that's accessible to everyone in and outside the team. In short, this is a great book.

This book is very well-timed. Now that agile development practices are "crossing the chasm" towards professionally accepted standards, this book reminds us that "agile" is neither a narrow, prescriptive set of standardized practices, nor a free-for-all smorgasbord of every possible practice.

This book will give teams and their management the information necessary to make informed decisions about the make-up of a software product team, and how it operates. The Art of Agile Development is intelligent, thoughtful, professional, and realistic. It is based on years of varied experiences, and it reveals a well-tested set of recommendations.

Part I

The book starts out with high-altitude answers to "Why?" and "How?" and a satisfying definition of "success." This is followed by a story of a hypothetical XP team. The story is full of dialog revealing the day-to-day functioning of a well-running team as a new hire joins the team. That dialog may seem contrived, but it's likely more of a composite of things heard on various teams. Yes, agile teams do enjoy their work, and people who enjoy their work talk about it as portrayed. I think this portrayal brings forth an important decision for the reader: Do you suspect that your development teams could truly run more smoothly, or are you merely looking for a way to dismiss this weird new "agile movement" and get on with your agonizing career? (Either way, keep reading!)

Part II

The second section of the book is a detailed exploration of the development practices recommended by the authors. There are a number of practices recognizable from XP, with some additional thoughtful practices, some realistic alterations, and some notable replacements. As I said, this is neither a full buffet, nor is it a restrictive diet. This is a menu prepared by two experienced chefs. They talk about contraindications and alternatives for each practice, but they also warn of the pitfalls of removing key ingredients.

Each chapter, or practice, comes with embedded boxes highlighting important points, and "allies," which are the names of other related (and supporting) practices and their page numbers. These allies appear in little grey boxes in the margins. They give you the ability to use the book as a reference, but they also paint an important picture of how the practices fit together.

I have to give special credit to the authors for the chapter they call simply "Trust." Under "alternatives" they state rather clearly that there are none. No replacement for trust! It seems so obvious, and yet teams struggle every day because they don't have it. The authors, thankfully, provide suggestions for establishing lasting trust.

Another noteworthy chapter is "No Bugs." If you're standing in the bookstore trying to decide whether or not to buy the book, turn to this chapter. These practices bring numerous others into focus. Again, if you're thinking "pipe dream," keep reading. If you follow this menu conscientiously and rigorously, you will arrive at the sweet dessert of extremely high-quality code.

Part III

Have you ever had a delicious meal at a friend's house, obtained the recipe, tried it for yourself, and thought "Oh, that didn't turn out well!" What can you do?

It takes experience (and that means real time in the kitchen) before you can comfortably tweak a chef's recipe. You can also go back to your experienced friend and ask for advice or clarification. This book provides the same opportunity. Read Parts I and II, go try it for a while, then come back to Part III.

This section describes the underlying values and principles behind the agile practices, and will help your new process and your team's existing culture work together towards greater and greater success. If a lot of the chapter titles in this section sound like Lean product-development principles, well, I think that's intentional.

It is perhaps difficult to pinpoint what is truly "agile." This book represents true agility without claiming to fully define it, and I hope it helps others on real software projects navigate a successful jump across the chasm.

This is mature, no-nonsense agility, in book form!

I've been working through this book for the last five or six weeks and have been loving it. Usually I do a deep skim read of most books -- the kind of reading you do in college where you need to get the gist of a book and some of the pearls -- but this one's grabbed me into an intense period of reading, reflecting, and re-reading parts.

Warden and Shore have written a fantastic work here. The book covers all aspects of Agile from planning to delivery, and each aspect is broken down into sensible sections. It reads like a series of great articles on very granular components of Agile such as Refactoring, 10-Minute Build, or Stand Up Meetings, but it's so well-written that all the articles mesh together perfectly leaving a smooth path through the book.

Each article (and that's my description, not theirs) lays out a specific practice or component of Agile, walks you through the benefits of it, details how that practice fits in the larger picture, shows you how to implement that practice, and discusses how to identify when you might need to implement or rework the practice. Each article is extremely well done and approaches its topic from a very pragmatic view. There are also cross-references to other practices elsewhere in the book that can help you solve related issues. Additionally, there are great references to other books, articles, and web posts.

Overall the book's just terrific. It's easy to read, it's pragmatic and practical, and it's thought-provoking. Art of Agile Development can be used by newcomers interested in moving into Agile practices, but it's also absolutely applicable to Agile pros looking to improve their own system. It certainly got me fired up with a number of ideas on how to improve our process even more. Perhaps that's the best endorsement of this book.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 40 reviews  4.6 out of 5 stars